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Anusha Bhat
Anusha Bhat

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3 difference between make and new in Go

I found make and new very interesting and hence decided to list down the differences:

  1. new ---> returns pointer
    make ---> returns an initialized value of type T

  2. new ---> initializes to 0 value of the type
    make ---> does not initialize to 0 value of the type

  3. new ---> used for all types
    make ---> used for only slices, maps and channels

Top comments (3)

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Nathan Dane

In what circumstance would you use new(StructType) over something like &StructType{}? I tend to use the latter everywhere as it's easier later to add fields.

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Anusha Bhat

Even I use &StructType{} most of the times. During initialization if the values of the fields are not known, new(StructType) is good to use as it initialises them to zero values of the fields.

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Nathan Dane

I’ve attempted to use new(StructType) for the last 2 days and I’ve found that it does make intention easier to read when skimming through code. It especially helps when unmarshaling json/protobuf into a struct as I quite often miss out the & to create a pointer in my haste and wonder why it doesn’t work later! new eliminates this as it is always a pointer! 😋